OutLoud

by Sally Sheklow

JAYBIRD

Luck be a voluptuous naked lady tonight.

I am the luckiest person in the world. Okay, maybe the guy who won the $360 million PowerBall is pretty lucky, but now that poor guy will never know if people only like him for his new helicopter. I, on the other hand, having won by a landslide the title of "Most Unlikely to Ever Own Helicopter," am therefore lucky enough to trust the sincerity of my friends.

I am definitely lucky to have absolute trust in my girlfriend's love. When she steps out of the bathroom still steaming from her morning shower, drops her towel, and shouts "Ta-da," I know she's not gold digging for any chopper excursion. She hopes I don't mind that she's naked as a jaybird, and I assure her she looks nothing like a jaybird, which is the honest truth. That inspires her to jump into a rousing rendition of "Rockin' Robin," punctuated by a dance step you'll just have to imagine for yourself, but which perfectly expresses the concept and rhythm of "Tweedle-ee-deedle-ee-deet."

While she's singing about all the little birdies on Jaybird Street, I'm thinking how lucky I am to have this wowie-zowie dance show just for me, right here in the comfort of my own home. In all his Bandstand days, Dick Clark himself never saw such great moves.

Speaking of dicks, last week we went to see a movie starring Jack Nicholson about a man's self-discovery after his plump, and therefore supposedly unappealing, wife dies while dust-busting spilled flour off the kitchen floor. I would just once like to see a movie about a woman's self-discovery after her unappealing husband suffers an untimely, dust-busting death. And here I thought women's liberation would have caught on by now.

But fortunately, the picture was not a total loss. For one thing, Girlfriend and I got to spend hours in a dark theater holding hands-another example of that good luck thing. Granted, the theater was so crowded we had to sit in the front row and crane our necks back to tonsillectomy position. However-and here's my good fortune again-from that perspective the actors appeared to have gigantic torsos and heads the size of a common rutabaga, a distortion in itself entertaining enough to more than make up for our mounting chiropractic bills.

My good luck landed us in seats with plenty of room to stretch our legs. Laid out like that, we could simultaneously watch Jack Nicholson learn that life is what you make it and train for the luge.

As another lucky bonus, Kathy Bates comes in so late in the film that our brains had time to compensate for the optical-illusion rutabaga heads. By the time Goddess Bates walks on the scene, the actors' heads now appeared to have grown to the size of large kohlrabi.

Speaking of large, and I refer back to the lucky aspect of my life again, in the unexpected best part of the whole movie, Girlfriend and I were thrilled to catch a fleeting-yet-sensual glimpse of filmdom's Supreme Being, Kathy Bates, disrobing for the hot tub. Who knew we would have the sensuality of size affirmed and promoted at the theater that day? Wow. What luck! Finally, there was a real, voluptuous woman on the big screen. Victoria's Secret could gain a huge (literally) market segment if it would hire models built like Kathy to do its skimpy underwear commercials. You don't need an Audubon field guide to know there is nothing in the world that looks less like a jaybird. Except-lucky me-my own private dancer. "Tweedle-ee-deedle-ee-deet."

Sally Sheklow lives in Oregon with her voluptuous girlfriend. Send comments to sally@wymprov.com.

If you have any comments about this article, please email them to letters@outsmartmagazine.com.